Bittersweet Infamy - #51 - Pregnant? Don't Want to Be? Call Jane.

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

Josie tells Taylor about the underground abortion organization that served Chicago during America's sexual revolution. Plus: the legacy of Star Trek's Lt. Uhura, and one of the most infamous kisses in TV history.

Welcome to Bitter Sweden for me. I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in him, shocking the unbelievable and the unforgettable. Truth may be bitter, stories are always sweet. So Josie, episode 50 was a yoked beast of an episode. Truly, truly a beautiful beast, a beast of love, flight, our hideous child. Joy and celebration. It was a fake award ceremony that took a lot longer than you would think behind the hood under the hood. That one. Oh, baby.

One thing that we did do on our last episode, episode 50 is we debuted our coffee link, which we internally have been calling Kofi as in the first ever Ghanaian world champion of the WWE Kofi Kingston. Who deserves more recognition, obviously. Who deserves all the props? Kofi Mania, WrestleMania 35, we all remember. The reason that I mentioned this is because if we screw up and say Kofi at some point, you know now that we're talking about coffee and coffee, which is spelled K-O-hyphen-f-i-dot-com-forge-slash-bitter-sweet-infamy, is our new way for the bitter sweetheart. That's you to financially support the podcast if it's within your means to do so. Yeah, shoot us the price of a coffee. Please don't mortgage your house. We don't even do that, so you shouldn't. We don't own property, so we're fine. No, nothing to mortgage.

Basically, as Josie says, you kick us the price of a coffee. We send you some love and some appreciation, and we've decided we also want to give a little treat to those who support the podcast. A sweet treat. With the Daladalas. A sweet little, a bittersweet treat, if you like. Stay tuned for more information on that, but it'll basically be an hour of exclusive content. They're about. And it will be retroactively available to everyone who has already so kindly supported the podcast. Who are those people again, Josie? Right out of the gate, we had Jonathan or John Mountain give us a few little buckaroonies, as well as Lizzie Dee and Ramon,

whom we all know and love from episode, what was it again? 44. Bloodbath on Broadway. Ramon Esquivel. Yes, and thank you so much, Lizzie, for such, I saw the message that you left so kind. So everyone's sending some very sweet, some bittersweet love our way, and we want to reciprocate that. So we're going to give you about an hour of exclusive content. Yeah.

Available to anybody who kicks us any amount of money at any point past, present, or future. Just thanks so much. You're such a little love fest getting those messages. Yeah. Josie. Yeah. You fucking swam Alcatraz, buddy. I did.

And not only did I swim it, but my brother, Poncho, otherwise known as Frank, he swam it. My sister, Dina, and my mother, Alice. Alice won first in her heat, my dude. Mmm. Very 70 to 74, wetsuit with flippers. She nailed that category. So. Never older, simply bolder.

And my brother, who lives in San Francisco, that fucker didn't train at all. And he got like three hours of sleep the night before because he had to work. Oh, boys. Yeah. My hats off to Poncho because he really, he really nailed that swim. He did such a good job. That's really proud of him because he had like every psychological reason to not do it or to quit as you were doing it.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And he did it. I thought that was really cool. Good for him. So it was the swim from Alcatraz. Okay. And so this is a very infamous swim.

Very infamous swim. It truly is. Truly is. Not a lot of people make it, but a lot of those people in the infamous swim category, I suppose, have been on prison rations and haven't been able to train whatsoever. They do it under the cover of night with absolutely no knowledge of the current happening in that area. So, you know, there were boats, kayaks, jet skis, the whole rigmarole.

We had little monitors on our ankles. Oh, that other people were using. I thought you were saying that they gave you jet skis. Oh, no. This isn't a swim, Josie. No, there were. You've been misled. Yeah.

No, there was a crew. We were the cast. They were the crew helping us across. I see. I see. Yeah. The water is real gross. We all got out and we were like covered in like muck, like pond scum, muck.

It was, that was pretty nasty. And I know I drank a lot of that water just because it was pretty choppy. Swimming through some. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. Delicious. Happy San Francisco Bay water. And it was cold. It was pretty chilly.

We all had wetsuits, so that was good. Oh, I think some of the best parts were the views, like the fish eye view of Alcatraz and then the cityscape. The fish eye view. I'm just a big fish. It was also really nice because with the training that I've done, it was like you get out of the pool and you're like, okay, well now I've got to go to work. Or like now I've got errands to run or whatever.

And this time you like got out of the water and there's like this tunnel of people cheering you. And all my family was there with like donuts and breakfast bagels and coffee with whiskey. And it was just like, oh, this is fun. Very sweet. Yeah. Very sweet. Look at that functional family dynamic.

I know, I know, yeah. The family that bathes together stays together. That was good. Thank you. Put that on a button. From the icy cold waters of Alcatraz to the endless icy cold depths of outer space. You ready for the Minfamous? Transition Max Taylor?

That was excellent. Wow. Thank you. If you even knew what subject I was about to introduce here, you would know what a reach this is. Another thing that went down kind of off camera while we were taping episode 50 is I saw that one of the great actors had died and that was Nichelle Nichols who played Lieutenant Uhura on the original Star Trek series.

Yeah. I was already batting around the idea of a Nichelle Nichols-centric Minfamous. Oh. So I just kind of already, yeah, I already had it in the chamber kind of. I hadn't settled on it yet, but I was in my kind of top three. And so I was like, well, this is opportune now because the woman has just passed away and we can do it as a bit of a memorial to her. Yeah.

So I'm giving you a little bit of Star Trek Ito to start the episode. In 1964, Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, a show that would end up airing for three low-rated seasons on NBC starting in 1966. Low-rated? I didn't know that. Okay. Low-rated and canceled early. Of course, we all know that's not the full story.

The series would spawn an intensely devoted fandom and a media empire, including spin-off franchises, movies, cartoons, plush tribbles, the works. It's not to mention the social changes that it engendered as well. Which we'll be talking about. The category is Nichelle Nichols, right? Yeah. So we are going to be talking about this. So yeah, it was low-rated and it was canceled and too many people should grin it was canceled.

And this was sort of before there was Family Guy and Arrested Development and all of these canceled shows that come back and become long-running darlings. There was Star Trek because Star Trek, it had a tremendous amount of goodwill. It's notorious for having one of the first really intensely engaged fandoms that create fan works and have fan conventions and so on. Star Trek, the original series, is set in the 23rd century and it's a space opera. It's the best way I can think of to describe it. Space Western.

Beautiful. The sci-fi monster of the week show. We're touring through space. We're encountering aliens and creatures that 201 are moral parables about things actually happening on Earth. Or at the very least, on the bridge of the Enterprise, which is their ship that they're touring around in. We've got William Shatner as the brave Captain Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as the rational Vulcan

officer Spock, and of course, Nichelle Nichols as the ship's communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura. Beautiful. Beautiful stuff. And those costumes were so 60s iconic, I feel. I love them. I'm not a big Star Trek fan in general. In general, I don't actually spend that much time in what I would call high sci-fi.

Not out of any particular distaste, but just because my vice is cozy murder mysteries, right? Like different strokes for different folks. It is. But I have the most endearment toward the original Star Trek because it has that like very campy, operatic, retro, futurist. As Josie says, the women's Starfleet outfits are like these little red miniskirt with some go-go boots and like a bouffant hairdo.

There's a lot of like sexy lady aliens with ray guns. It's fantastic. It truly is. Now, as we know, sexy lady alien or normal human being, representation matters. And in the late 60s, the depiction of a poison intelligent black woman in a position of respect and influence was groundbreaking. Yeah, girl. The show's progressive stance on civil rights was explained by its setting.

In the 23rd century, we've all learned our lesson from the past about discrimination based on race. So we're still working on that one. But maybe by the time we get to the 23rd century. Hmm. Dream long. Let's not stop dreaming that particular dream at the very least. Exactly.

Yeah. And working toward making it a reality in tangible ways. Beautifully put. According to Jean Roddenberry in the making of Star Trek, this wasn't without internal controversy. NBC's suits were worried that the diverse cast would hurt marketability. Assholes. Although over time, it's gone on to be one of the show's most important and prescient

touches, I think. Yeah. No, totally. You want to trade the future you want to live in. Right. And we're seeing shows now catch up to it. It's not that Star Trek OG throwback legacy ultimate girls trip, whatever you want to call it.

It's not that that Star Trek is. It's still a lot of white dudes. It was still way ahead of where everything else was at the time. Yeah. Yeah. So popular was the show that when Nichelle Nichols considered quitting after the first season, she wanted to go pursue her own dreams and ambitions on Broadway. She was famously encouraged to stay aboard by none less than the reverend Dr. Martin

Luther King, Jr. who insisted that her presence was highly important for a television audience unused to seeing black women depicted in rules of importance. Whoa. Yeah. That's a that's a heavy, that's a heavy one, huh? Yeah. When the doctor taps you on the shoulder, you are you're listening. He said, quote, for the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every

day as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance, but who can go to space, who can be lawyers, who can be teachers, who can be professors, who are in this day. And yet you don't see it on television until now. He also said, quote, if you leave that door can be closed because your role is not a black role and it is not a female role. He can fill it with anybody, even an alien. I mean, he's got a point like the applicant pool is pretty wide. Yeah.

And your reaction of holy shit is an interesting one because Nichelle Nichols has since said that like she was angry at first when she heard that because she was like, like, why do why do I have to do this? I want to go and pursue my dream on Broadway. But now I'm kind of thrust into this role of importance. Since then, she talks about she's repeated that story ad nauseam as one of the great important moments in her life. So I think she's since reconciled her view on it.

Right. But at the time she was like, damn, that's a mixed blessing. Yeah, I could totally understand that because you're like, wait, so now I don't have a choice. And if I'm here or not, because I have to take up this mantle, I get it. Yeah, I totally get the frustration with that representation matters. But it's hard to feel like you have to represent. I'm glad she stuck around. Yeah, me too.

And she is as well. Yeah. Unfortunately, Dr. King wouldn't get to see out the series to its conclusion. He would be assassinated in 1968, the same year the show's final season aired. OK. It also aired in the wake of the 1967 Supreme Court decision on Loving versus Virginia, which ruled that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional. Fuck him.

It was in this time of much racial tension in America that Star Trek delivered what has often been remembered as television's first interracial kiss. Blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu. Now, as we know from 51 episodes of This Bees, Bitter Sweet Infamy, the first blank is almost never actually the first. True. True enough, yeah. So what was the actual first interracial kiss on TV?

Oh, what was it? Some point to Star Trek's original producers, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Oh. Though that inevitably results in much litigation of Desi's ethnic identity, from which I hope to spare you. Thank you. Thank you. But before we close that chapter.

Yes. Lucille and Desi were producers on Star Trek? Yes. Lucille Ball was apparently really instrumental into getting it to air. She was a big supporter of the project. Holy fuck. I didn't know that. That's amazing.

Although Star Trek.com says that she didn't originally understand the concept and she thought it was about a USO tour. Oh. Star Trek. OK. Yeah. Da-da-da-da-da. Whoa.

Yeah. I mean, it's the USS Enterprise, isn't it? So it's fair. I get it. This article on Star Trek.com is called How Lucille Ball Helps Star Trek Become a Cultural Icon. And it's got some pop art of Lucille Ball in little Starfleet uniforms. That's enjoyable.

Very cute. But after Desi and Lucille. So the point that we started us off there was Desi and Lucille. Possibly TV's first interracial kiss. OK. Others point to Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner, and his various on-screen kisses with actors like France Nguyen on The Ed Sullivan Show and Barbara Luna on Star Trek itself.

Lucky guy. He did a lot of kissing. Did William Shatner in the 60s, I believe? All right. He was smooching up on pretty ladies of every ethnicity it turns out. Glorious. Glorious news. Great way to live.

It's good work if you can get it. But either way, perhaps because of the time it took place, 1968, or the races of the actors involved, a white man and a black woman, Shatner and Nichols. OK, so it was William Shatner. It's William Shatner. Sorry, I should be clear. It's William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols, Captain Kirk and Lieutenant

Uhura who are about to guess. Yeah. And that probably violates some work objective or something. But you think that Starfleet HR got a call? You never know. By the way, I should also add that maybe the other reason that perhaps this is remembered as the first interracial kiss is that producers took out an ad in the Hollywood report

or hyping it as such. So as much as we've got this kind of it's like a forbidden thing, right, because we've got the execs very about it. So we'll hear. And it's 1968 and this is very, so we're courting the controversy a tiny bit here, too, as well. Right, yeah. We're seeking to deletion.

Yeah. At least in terms of how the network marketed it. I don't want to speak for the intentions of the person who wrote the episode or the show itself, which in general doesn't engage in that type of thing. I read this more as fan service because basically it's an episode where all the male and female leads get mind controlled into kissing each other. So it's like we can have the characters kiss, but it's not really

of consequence. It's just pretend. Right. So HR is like, well, we can take this off our desk because this was a mind control situation. Yes. Mind control planet, classic mind control planet, right? Oh, could you imagine working HR for the USS Enterprise?

It'd be so hard. They probably have a special forum for mind control planet. Yeah, so hard. So in most modern discussions, Star Trek, season three, episode 10, Plato's Stepchildren gets the honors for first interracial TV kiss. So it's a dicey category, but this is what lore has crowned, right? Yeah. But they're also they're having their cake and they're eating it too,

because as you'll hear throughout this story, the only people who are tight asses about this are the network. The actors are basically able to be normal, fucking human beings about it. The writer, like it's just the network has a real stick up their ass about this. So have you ever seen this episode of Star Trek? It's called Plato's Stepchildren. No, I have not. OK, so I watched it last night and let me tell you, it was a trip.

The big is our basic paint by numbers version of the plot here, which, you know, go watch Jean Ronberry's original Star Trek. It's very good. It's very campy. It's very fun. The acting is peak drama. You can't get enough. So opera. Here we go.

It's very it's operatic. It's very operatic, right? Of course, our male lead is William Shatner, who, you know, just takes these beautifully evocative 1960s interpretation of 23rd century outer space sets and gnaws them into submission. Beautifully put. Just capital A acting.

Canadian hero. Isn't he? He's one of ours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? That Billy Shatner. He he babysat my neighbor's kids. No way. Nice kid. OK, so Plato, stepchildren.

The story goes that via a distress signal and also a compelling psychic force on the ship, the enterprise and specifically Kirk, Spock and Dr. Bones McCoy get called down to assist the ailing emperor of the most fucking awful pretentious planet in the galaxy, basically.

They're all, oh, my God. Oh, I can't. I got to keep moving forward. So they're the worst. But they they're an alien race who time travel to the time of the great Greek philosophers. Plato, so crates, I believe it's pronounced, etc. 50 crates, 50 studied under them

and then basically came back to their home planet where they have lived immortal ever since, living a decadent philosophical life, calling themselves plutonians and basically using their psychic will to sadistically manipulate outsiders and lesser thans. Wow, that's complicated. There's a lot of it is.

It is so it is so intricate. It is an intricate concept. Right, yeah. Bones McCoy heals this sickly God emperor who then decrees via psychic will that Bones McCoy should stay and the rest can go. Of course, Spock and Kirk are not about to leave their homey down here on this like weird

sadistic mind control planet. Right. And so they refuse and then the rest of the episode is basically this mad emperor like mind controlling Spock, Kirk into doing like increasingly humiliating and upsetting things in order to make Bones McCoy crack and agree to stay. So just like psychically torturing people. Oh, interesting. OK.

They make Spock dance a flamenco around Kirk while Kirk lies on the ground. So it's just these like really fucked up disturbing improv games. The whole episode basically like it's everyone's doing like really broad clowning work because they have to pretend that they're being mind controlled. But it's also this really disturbing concept, but it's also this very intense, serious acting.

It's a real head fuck. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Lord. About three quarters of the way through the episode, Uhura and the nurse character. They get psychically called down from the enterprise and they're made to like perform this kind of weird fucked up. Again, it's like a fucked up improv show where they're being psychically mind controlled.

They're in these like saucy outfits and first Spock, Sarah Nades, the women and then they take turns sitting down on these weird settees and stroking each other's faces until finally, despite their greatest urges to resist it, both Spock and the nurse as well as Kirk and Uhura are psychically compelled to kiss one another. And I've got a clip. Hey. Clip me. I'm thinking.

I'm thinking of all the times on the enterprise when I was scared to death. And I would see you so busy at your command. And I would hear your voice from all parts of the ship. My fears would fade and now they're making me tremble. But I'm not afraid. I am not afraid. So both Spock and Kirk are mind controlled then into getting

Kirk gets a whip and Spock gets a red hot poker. And it looks like they're about to attack the women with it. So it's really scary. Like they're about to get mind controlled into like, yeah. So there's there's all kinds of like overtones of like abuse, assault, coercion and all of this, right? They're really coercion. It seems. Yeah. And it's a sadistic crowd of just again,

the most awful people that you ever met at a timeshare. Just fucking heckling you. It's disgusting. But happily they figured out Kirk, Spock, McCoy have during this time been able to figure out that if you stay here long enough and eat the food, you'll get a certain chemical in your blood that will also allow you to have psychokinetic powers. And so they are able to psychically resist

and turn the tables on the emperor, who they kind of just leave alone, honestly. OK, OK. Wow. And that's the episode that is Plato's Step Children. It is a real fever dream of ideas. It's it's very trippy. Yeah, the Grecian High drama. Yeah, so we might as well talk about the filming of The Kiss Itself,

because apparently says Nichelle, the suits were hovering the whole time and were really stressing the director out, the director who was then stressing the actors out by coming in and being like, Bill, they want you to do a take where you don't actually kiss her and it's just simulated and saying it to Bill, rather than Nichelle, who is also sitting there, who's also a participant in the scene, right?

Right, yeah. Oh, God. And she's like, I don't give a shit one way or the other, but y'all need to get it together. The way that it seems to have been dealt with, particularly by William Shatner, was an approach of like, let's just waste as much time as we can, doing terrible, unusable takes of a real kiss until finally, like, get some good takes in of an actual kiss

and then just waste the rest of the time botching, making each other laugh until we're down to the very last moment to finally do the simulated kiss. So we can only do like one take. Right, so they get like a bad take and they can't use it. Yeah, exactly. So get some good takes of the real kiss

and then when it came to the very final take, which was the fake kiss, apparently William Shatner dipped her real deep as you saw and then crossed his eyes right into the camera so they couldn't use it. Good teamwork. Teamwork makes the dream work, baby. Nichelle speaks about Shatner with great affection. They seem to enjoy each other.

Yeah. They see in the dailies the take, the bad take the next day. And there's like dead silence. People try not to laugh or whatever. And then the executives finally like, just run it with the real kiss. So they run it with the real kiss and the episode comes out. And it's nothing but fan mail, basically. Yeah, girl, don't stop.

Get it, get it. No bad vibes. The glut of negative reaction from the South that the network executives predicted never really occurred. Nichelle said she only saw one negative letter, which read, in part, I'm a white man from the South and I'm against the mixing of the races. But any time a red-blooded boy like Captain Kurt

gets a beautiful dame in his arms like Lieutenant Uhura, he ain't going to fight it. All right, then, OK. Yes. And and Nichelle Nichols also sees the humor in that as well. And we move forward agreeing. Sure, sure, we agree. OK, next.

Nichelle Nichols reprised the Uhura character many times over the years in Star Trek media from the 1970s until 2015, she committed her energy to diversifying outer space through volunteer work with NASA. That's so cool. Helping to recruit black and women applicants, including Sally Ride and Guillaume Buford. That's amazing. I didn't know that.

Yeah, you can learn more about this from the documentary Woman in Motion, Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek and the Remaking of NASA. Among the many who name Nichols and Uhura as inspirations is Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space who explicitly credits Uhura as sparking her interest in the cosmos. You're going to make me cry.

That's so cool. Says actor Celia Rose Gooding, who in 2022 portrays young Uhura on Paramount Plus' Star Trek Strange New World's quote, I probably wouldn't have a career without Nichelle's devotion to making room for strong-willed, intelligent, opinionated, graceful black women in entertainment. And lastly, here was Uhura's influence on YouTube commentator Mike L in PA, who comments as follows on her CNN video

obituary, quote, I was born in 61, and I live for Star Trek, parentheses, and fishing with my dad. It never occurred to me that a black woman with dignity, responsibility, and authority was odd. It seemed perfectly normal because that is how it should be. Thank you for being part of my childhood. Rest in peace.

Oh. Fishing with dad and Lieutenant Uhura, just as it should be. Yes. So that is the legacy of Nichelle Nichols, a star among stars, and an important figure in the realms of acting, space exploration, racial and gender equity, and most importantly, kissing. Mm.

Mm. A star among stars, a smooch among the stars. Here's a little piece of a little nugget of extra infamy. Apparently, this episode was banned for a long time by the BBC because of its depictions of sadistic torture. Like, it was too disturbing. Oh, and instead of the kiss, it was the torture. Yeah.

Whoa. Interesting. So it has that layer of infamy to it as well, that it's also this kind of fucked up, disturbing. It's kind of bad, but it's kind of good bad. Yeah. It's bittersweet. It's truly bittersweet.

Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Taylor, this is the story of an illegal abortion referral service turn clinic run by and for women in the city of Chicago. All the women involved, which was about roughly 100 women over the course of four years from 1969 to 1973, were anonymously called Jane. And they estimate they performed over 11,000 safe abortions in the city of Chicago. Safe abortions.

Oh, good. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yay. I mean, like, you know, I don't need to, I don't need to go, yay, but like, yay, safe. But go, yay. Yes.

No, safe. Yay. Yay for the safe. And I think too, like, as we learn more and more about this collective, it's essentially a collective, there is what at least what I took away is like this beautiful, this beautiful happening when it comes around abortion that I think is really like a pretty joyful thing. So we'll, we'll highlight that. We'll bring that to this story too.

Have you heard the story or have heard of the Janes or Jane? This is Kay. This is fucked up, but you're going to appreciate it. Okay. I love it. I love the code of King of the Hill where Peggy and Luan join that jam making cult and they're all named Jane. No, I have to go watch that.

You remember this? No. It's amazing. They get into like a jam, a jams and jellies sorority, but I think that Peggy, like Peggy infiltrates it to get Luan out because Luan gets recruited into this sorority cult selling jams and jellies. Oh my God. Luan gets her name changed to Jane.

I think Peggy gets her name changed to Old Jane or something like that. Beautiful. That's beautiful. So, just as to start off, I want to say two things. One is that I want to let all you beautiful listeners know that during this episode, I am going to discuss the political and social elements of abortion in the US specifically. And I'm also going to have some explicit descriptions of abortion procedures and their physical and emotional effects.

So if in any way that sounds like something that is not on your to-do list for today, for whatever reason, please go ahead, take care of yourself and what you need. Listen to number 19, Night Trap, Melty's Winner. Best episode. Best episode. Yeah, no abortions in that one. No. No.

Not that we know of. So that's great. I mean, the critics had their opinions, but abortion is harsh. Exactly. See? We found the joy. We'll be fine. See?

We're good. We're good. Yes. The second thing I want to put out there too is I'm going to spill some beans here up front because I think it's important to this telling and important in the way that I want to tell the story too. And that is like, you know, little manifesto time. I believe that abortion is a fundamental health care.

I believe abortion should be available to all who want one or more for whatever reason they have. I think that all people should have a choice whether or not they carry a pregnancy and they should have a choice whether or not they raise another human being. And I believe that giving people the agency to make that choice recognizes and honors that monumental responsibility of parenthood. And I believe that that agency to make that choice is an inalienable human right. So just want to put that there too.

I think that you speak eloquently and from the heart, as always, and that's something that I admire about you. Yeah. Cosine. My take on it is adjacent to yours. My basic take in so many words or fewer is, number one, listen to... Literally anybody who can get pregnant's take before mine, but once you listen to all those and come back.

Number two, I think I come from like, regardless of your moral qualms or questions about when life begins or whatever, just recognizing that this is something that happens regardless and from a harm reduction perspective, what is the safest, most humane, cleanest, most ethical, blah, blah, blah way to carry out this common medical procedure for which there has historically often been need and has historically been really deadly consequences for not doing well and so on. So that's where I come to it from is I'm like, moral questions aside, and I will hear people's moral questions about it, whether or not they're my moral questions is a separate issue, but

I'll hear people out. But I think that just like from a healthcare perspective, it's the right thing to do. It's something that's easily and safely accessed in every community. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think I think that's a really important point of that too is like, it's gonna happen. So we might as well use the medical knowledge and skill that we have to make it as safe as possible.

Yeah. I really like how you you pose that moral question too, because through the researching of this story, I've been challenged to examine those moral questions, like more closely, like you say, like I'm totally willing to hear more questions out, I'm totally willing to kind of roll through my own moral questions, but I personally have not had an abortion. And to my knowledge, I have never been pregnant. So much of what I've thought about abortion hasn't needed like a real world conclusion. It's been theoretical.

I was just going to say that I want to also clarify just because and forgive me and us if we speak imperfectly at various points about the subject, right? Just because it's such a loaded subject. The quote unquote moral question that I'm willing to entertain is I think maybe a more conceptual one of when does life begin? But I also really don't abide moral judgment of either the people who for whatever reason or another opt to have this procedure, or those who as part of their responsibilities as a medical care provider carry it out.

I don't morally judge anybody in that situation. Yeah, yeah. To be clear is crystal. Yeah. Like you say, it's like such a contentious topic, especially now that it's important. Yeah. So that was quite the preamble there, but now I'm going to let you know. If anyone doesn't get it, it's about abortion.

Yeah. If that didn't make it sink in for you, you got three, two, one. Give it a little pause. OK, you're in. All right, let's go. OK, because it always sucks to end on a downer, and I don't want to do that for this episode, we're going to start with some of the bad news first, and we're going to go and reverse chronological order.

So as of June 24th, 2022, so just a few weeks ago, the US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade in what's called the Dobbs decision. So what that means is that the right to an abortion in the US is no longer federally recognized. So individual states, they have to, or they, I don't know, they get to, they have to determine the legality of abortion within their state. Have you been following any of this news this summer? I've kept an eye on Texas because you are a coupled friend of mine of childbearing age,

and so this could hypothetically affect you. So I've kept an eye on Texas. Yeah, well, it's been another shitstorm, to be honest. In large part because a federal ruling covers all the states, so it's like one document, one law covers them all, and then with the overturn of Roe v. Wade, that dissolves the one law and creates individual ones within each state. So it's like a total legal quagmire. And opens the floodgate for other such similar legal quagmires around any number of decisions.

Yes, yeah, exactly, including access to contraceptives, same-sex marriage, like there's a lot that feels on the chopping block. We're going to need Macklemore to sing us another song. Oh God, Macklemore, please. Spare us. I still haven't changed, and I don't want to. No? No?

Somehow that didn't help. Come back from your golf show, Macklemore, and save the gays, please. You heard it here first. Our most important ally. Once the overturn of Roe v. Wade trigger bans have been tripped in numerous states so that abortions were banned as immediately as possible. So it was like once Roe v. Wade turned off, essentially trigger bans were tripped and they came into effect.

Some states have made all abortions illegal with no exceptions for rape, incest, the mother's physical or mental well-being, including but not limited to underage pregnancies. So if a girl under the age of 18 becomes pregnant, she doesn't have access to abortion. That's it all, like we were saying, it depends on the state, so it's all over the place. Depends what state line that you are living under. Some states have upheld abortion access and they've written it into their state constitutions so that it cannot be challenged or moved or doing so involves a very robust legal process. With all of this confusion, doctors are confused about what they can and cannot do when it

comes to women's health care. And instead of relying on their medical training or listening to their patients, they are relying on legal advice. Nope. And hopefully some of those considerations or some of that confusion that doctors are experiencing will be resolved as the laws solidify, but at this point it's utter pandemonium. Doctors are worried that they're going to get sued and all this stuff. What happens when you get pregnant before those laws congeal?

Exactly. You are under the jurisdiction of the hospital's lawyer or a board of doctors or whatever it is and in emergency situations, someone needs to make choices much faster than that. It's a little spooky. So the Dobs decision, the overturning of Roe v. Wade is a pretty monumental Supreme Court decision that has changed a lot of things in this country and a lot of people's feeling of safety or their own rights, their agency. The requests for vasectomies have skyrocketed.

We'll say that. It's about time. Kitchen. Do your part, folks. Got the snip. Bob Barker. I'm Bob Barker for vasectomies. In my own understanding of the situation, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was just like,

What? Holy fuck. Where are we living? A huge turning point. But I think it's also important to recognize that there have been numerous legal cases ever since Roe v. Wade came into effect in 1973 that have limited access to abortion. And the list is long. The bucket is extremely large.

It's not a bucket. It's a vat of these legal cases. Not a vat. A vat. Not a cauldron. Oh, no. Yeah, my dude. So now I'm going to take you to 1960s Chicago, Illinois.

60s poochie dress. Yeah. Yeah. Mini skirts. Nichelle Nichols smooching on TV. Yes. That's where we are. Chicago is largely a Catholic town.

The majority of the anti-abortion movement is grounded in Catholic ideology. God's plan. Yeah. Which is different from today that has a lot more Christian right. So anyway, Chicago, it's highly illegal to access an abortion. It's also just a crazy time in terms of sex education. There's not a lot of it happening. Yeah.

That's Catholics, baby. It's not until 1965 in another Supreme Court decision, Griswold versus Connecticut, that determines that married people can have unfettered access to contraceptives. Oh, damn. Was the logic before, why would you need contraceptives? You're fucking married. Again, I guess Catholic. Yep.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. In 1972, in Eisenstadt versus Bard, again, another Supreme Court decision making these decisions on contraceptives, but that right to access to contraceptives is extended to single people, not just married people. Hey, welcome to the party.

I know. Yeah. Poppin' pills. You know what, fuck it up. Let's pop all the pills, kids. Dude, Taylor from the podcast said, pop all the pills tonight. Don't do it. I don't want that on no blood on my hands.

No, no, no, no, no. Right. No, no, no. You drink a glass of water and you go to bed early. Yeah. Both of these court cases surrounding access to contraception are decided with the idea of privacy, the right to privacy. married couple has a right to the privacy of deciding if they have contraceptive and

a single person then later is decided to have that right to privacy. Yes. This also has overlap with sodomy laws and things like that and in kind of a queer context too. Yeah. That's also kind of based around like what you do in your bedroom is not the government's business, right? Right.

Yeah. Right now it's not the government's business. Let's give it six months. Sorry. Exactly. Which is all very strange. So women at this time, they're attending college. They are accessing jobs, but it's relatively restricted where they can work.

You know, a lot of secretary jobs. So there's the civil rights movement, the student movement, the anti-war movement that are all in full swing and later sixties in Chicago. Again, classic that are sweet infamy transition. It's the sixties. Everything changed. Everything changed. Yeah.

Exactly. So it's been combined to be called the movement, which you remember Taylor is how I referred to your activist work in LGBTQ. Yes. The movement. Yes. It was pretty fun. When Josie and I were on a relatively new level of acquaintance, we're sitting, so cute,

such a cute Josie story to me, we were sitting in the bar at Kerner's and I was explaining to Josie that as I've alluded in like kind of other episodes I've done what I will for a shorthand called queer activism and Josie goes, so how long have you like worked within the movement or like something like that? Or like, have you always worked with the movement? And I was just like so smitten by that turn of phrase just instantly. I was like, that's darling. And so I still think of it as my work in the movement.

So yes, I'm very, I, I, I, I too, I too am familiar with the movement, isn't my point? Yes. You're welcome. I introduced you. I really, it was me. The women's movement is part of this. It's part of the larger societal change, but it is definitely for the women who are involved, it feels very secondary to the anti-war movement, to the civil rights movement, the youth movement.

For a lot of different reasons, like each sector, each mini movement within the larger movement has different objectives and so there's different ideas about why the women's movement kind of falls secondary to them. But there's enough to say that women were just expected to follow along and listen to what the men were doing, put in the good fight, but not really bring up their own personal interests or concerns because they would detract from the overall objective. One woman who was, she was a student at the University of Chicago. Her name is Heather Booth and in 1964 she spent the summer in Mississippi working on

the Freedom Summer Project, which was a project for people to join the civil rights movement, register black voters and create free schools according to like this whole system of the Freedom Summer Project. She was living in Mississippi for the summer. She was working at what they called a Freedom Center, so it was kind of like a hub of this project and a bomb threat was called in. The people at the Freedom Center called the police explaining the situation and the police were like, okay, thanks, good luck, Sia, they never showed up.

Good luck. The whole night, all of these activists, all of these essentially young college kids were sleeping on the floor just terrified that the place was going to blow up any second. And it's not an unfounded threat. There were plenty of bombings happening, especially in the South connected to the civil rights movement. People bomb shed. They do.

So Heather Booth, and that is her real name, I'll talk a little bit about the anonymity of names through this story, but she has come out since this time and given her real name. Through that experience, she understood that you can't rely on the government and you need to stand up to illegitimate rules. There's a time and a place where the laws cannot be governing you and should not be governing you the way they are. Laws are written by people. People have flaws.

Yeah. So Heather Booth comes back to Chicago from her summer in Mississippi and she gets a knock on her door from her friend who says, I have been raped at Knife Point in my off campus housing and I need you. I need you to help me. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. Heather says, Holy fucking geez.

She takes her to the Student Health Center on campus where her friend is first lectured on her promiscuity and then told that the center does not have any gyneological services and she needs to go elsewhere. Heather is fucking livid. She's like, this is the most irresponsible, disgusting situation and you know, I've seen a lot and this is up there. So Heather has kind of turned on to the situation that women when it comes to their reproductive health and what gets to be determined as her promiscuity or not are not treated equally.

And so she starts maneuvering herself into more of the women's rights movement. She makes a name for herself so much so that a friend of hers calls her and explains how his sister is pregnant and she doesn't want to be pregnant and he calls Heather because he's like, you know people, is there any way that you can help? Heather calls a doctor that she knew from the civil rights movement in Mississippi and asks what he can do. He says, I'll take care of it, pass along my information. Heather says he was good to his word.

The abortion took place. Everything was safe, clean and then Heather got another call asking for an abortion and then she got another call asking for an abortion and then another call and she has this one doctor who's a civil rights doctor and she calls on him and all of a sudden as the months go by and she's getting more and more requests, he stops taking her phone calls. Heather, she realizes that TRM Howard, who is the guy's name, was arrested on charges connected to his civil rights work. So she needs to find somebody else.

She finds a number through her channels, she calls and is told, okay, sure thing. We do all of our procedures out of Cicero and you know Cicero, I know you know Cicero. I do. Wait, it's of Al Capone's vaults. Yes. Yes, that Al Capone showed up and ruined. Yes, yes and ever since has been this mob stronghold outside of Chicago. Yes, this is our Chicago trilogy by the way, we finally did it.

Yeah, this, Candyman and Al Capone. This comes all in, beautiful. So we finally have you ever been to Chicago? No, we need to go. We need to meet either. Why are we doing so many Chicago stories? Anyway. It's a good town.

Good city. Yeah. Heather is really worried that she has connected with the mob who she realizes is a very known entity in terms of the abortion ring because it's illegal. They can extract as much money as they want from people because people are in a desperate situation and they're not willing to talk, right? So she stops calling that contact and instead pulls on more and more from around the city. And it's kind of varying participation.

Some doctors say outright, hell no, never call me again, hang up on her. Others say I'm willing but under certain circumstances. Others are like, hey, hell yeah, sign me up. And then after the influx becomes quite a bit, they're like, I need to stop. I think I might be attracting attention. So the fluctuation of participation from doctors goes up and down for varying reasons. The whole time though, Heather is becoming the point person in Chicago for women seeking abortion.

Women seeking abortion through the women's movement, I should say. She's white, she's educated, she's middle class. She's very well spoken and extremely politically devoted. You can imagine the amount of time that it takes for her to field these phone calls, arrange these situations, let women know. And this is before voicemail even. Wow. This is like a very, yeah, she's sitting at the kitchen table with the phone cord wrapped

around her five times kind of vibe. So as you can imagine, Heather was quickly overwhelmed with this referral service that she had kind of inadvertently stumbled on. She's still at the same time very active in the women's rights movement and going to all these meetings, doing the good work. Moving. Moving the men. Move the movement, move it.

She goes to these meetings and she kind of is sussing out who is in attendance, which makes women, she thinks, might be interested in helping her. Because as you'll remember, abortion is a felony in the state of Illinois in 1969. Catholics. Big Jesus got in there. Big Jesus. And it wasn't quite, you know, take my number, haha. She had to be a little bit more discerning in what she was doing.

She did get a group of people together because at this point she's a very skilled organizer and she gets this group of women into their own meeting and she proposes this service. And she wants the service to do two things. The first is the most practical to help women obtain abortions. She states very clearly to these women, this is an illegal action and if you are not interested or if you are uncomfortable with that, then this is not where you need to spend your time. Get in or get out. You know how at the beginning we were like abortions, three, two, one, get in or get out?

That was her tactic as well. Exactly. And then her second objective was to fulfill a political element which was to create a bond between women, to raise a feminist consciousness among the women that they could help. Many of the women were interested in that. Second point, not everybody in the first. And through this feminist consciousness building too, the group, according to Heather, needed to be devoted to women.

This idea that you never lie to women, that everybody involved needed to understand their complicity and that this decision to join had to be, they had to have all the information in order to join, but also that needed to be conveyed to the women who were choosing to have an abortion. All the information needed to be conveyed to them in order to allow them the choice. What Heather was interested in was not just saying like, oh, here's a number, here's a number, show up here, good luck, see ya. She was really interested in this political movement that she wanted to build and create.

That illegal aspect definitely thinned the group. The next time the group of women met, there was far fewer, but all of those women had agreed to those two elements that Heather wanted to bring. But then they kind of devised a little bit more of the practical elements. The first one was, how are we going to do this so that our names aren't necessarily out there? Yes. And the first thing that came to mind was we get a phone number and we list it.

We pick a random name. We all are called that name. Ooh, this is very Ocean's Eleven. It's very Ocean's Eleven, exactly. And they chose Jane because they felt that it wasn't a very common name anymore. So there was that. When we do our heist, can I go by Taylor Jacuzzi and you can be Flinders Petrie? Yes, please.

Okay, sweet, sweet. Jacuzzi and Petrie together is a kind of nice Petrie dish. I hate it. I hate it. Yeah, I love it. It's so good. So they choose the name Jane. Of course, there's also the connections to Jane Doe and the animinity of Jane Doe.

So are we pre-Jane Roe? Yes, we are. Oh, yes, of course we are because abortion is illegal. Yes. What am I thinking? I think her court case is up, though. It's like being tried in Texas maybe at this time in 69, but she's not on the national scene, at least the name Jane Roe is not.

They're interested in the animinity of it, of course, for legal reasons. But there's also this element where as a service, they want to de-center some of the medical hierarchy that's in place. So they're interested in de-centering the doctor or the one who is doing the abortion. They want to make sure that they are centering the woman who is making this decision. It is this woman's choice. It is her life and she is the one enacting this decision. Not to say that they are not complicit.

They're working out her will, but it is her will that needs to be centered, not this kind of savior idea of like, oh, Jane, isn't she wonderful or whatever their personal name is. They want to break that down and rebuild it so that there's focus on the woman's choice. That makes perfect sense. I find that so extraordinary, too, because there's a few doctors working at this time who are very out and public about their work, but they kind of become like these savior names, you know, and typically they're male doctors.

And it's like, I'm Dr. Sonso and I'm doing so good work and everyone should love me. As to how Jack Kevorkian was the face of assisted dying, right? Yes. So that's that sort of vibe? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing. I think movements need heroes.

You know, we need, we tell this podcast, we need protagonists, we need names, we need people to like hang stories on and understand how the world moves. But I think this, this very conscious idea that Jane had of stripping themselves of that mantle was really interesting and it worked on this legality level, but it also worked on like this consciousness raising and centering the woman that they were trying to do, too. So I just think it was, it was a cool idea. It's a good brand, too.

It's a good story because you hear it and you're like, oh, why do they all go by Jane? And then they say that and you're like, oh, that has maybe changed the way that I think about this issue. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. It's a good hook.

It's smart. What if your name is actually Jane? I don't know if they ran into that issue. Did you think of this, too? Did you like, did you think this in your research? Like what if my name is Jane? No, I guess I did it. No.

Uh-uh. Jeanet. I came back from France and I'm Jeanet now. No, I'm Jeanet. Yeah. Jan. Are you mean Janet? Jan?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's anonymous name Jane. They put up flyers all around the city and they read pregnant question mark, don't want to be question mark, called Jane, 643-3844. I don't know. I love this idea because when it is a woman's name, when it's not like a center's name or like a service name.

Yeah. Yeah. Jane's just your girlfriend. Just your girlfriend. Yeah. Your girlfriend be like, hi, I'm looking for Jane and they didn't have to say anything about abortion. They didn't say anything about doctors or anything like that.

Yeah. And they could all have this anonymity, which is really dope. How clever. Yeah. And I wanted to say this earlier and I should have made a note, but I didn't. Something to mark out here, too, is that it's 1969 and this abortion service is happening within the context of the women's movement. So the language that they use does pertain to women, she, her.

Of course. Yeah. Now at this point in time, we know that people who have different pronouns or maybe don't identify as women still can get pregnant. Right. There's this really cute term for this called seahorse dad and because seahorses, the males carry the offspring. Yes, yes.

Yeah. How clever. It's really cute. Yeah. The group that is now called Jane or sometimes referred to as like the Jane service. I like just Jane. I like that they are this one amorphous woman who is like, Hey, hun, your man ain't shit. Come in.

I'll give you a stick and poke tattoo and an abortion and like, Oh, exactly. Oh yeah. No, the tea is a big part of it. And it's super old tech. So like give you a rundown. Like you, you, you see the fire, you see the phone number, you call and you're like, Hey, can I talk to Jane and you're terrified because you don't know there could be a cop on the other end.

You don't know. So a woman will answer and she'll say, Hi, I'm Jane. Are you looking? It's your Aunt Linda. Do you need a Linda? Is that where you were going? Yeah. No, exactly.

Yeah. She will take down all the pertinent information, which is like when was your last menstrual cycle? How far do you think you're along? How many children have you had before? Have you had any miscarriages? Have you had any abortions before? So they take down all this information and they put it on an index card.

Again, old school tech, write it all down. And then they describe to the woman what will happen in terms of like, you'll be driven here and driven there and someone will do the procedure for you. We will be with you the whole time. The procedure changes through the years. And then after all of that, there will be a follow up call. We will touch base again if you need any help there. And so a big part of this whole thing was this counseling service.

It was this educational counseling service where not only were they trying to get pertinent information that would be medically helpful for the procedure, but they were also saying like, have you ever seen your cervix? Do you know your birth control options? Have you read this cool book called Our Bodies Ourselves? A classic. Yeah. Yeah.

There would be all of these opportunities to bring the woman into the process, give her all the information she needs for the abortion, but also for after the abortion and what that might look like. One question that they never asked, never asked was why do you need an abortion? Interesting. Good. Good. I agree.

I knew that if someone was calling them, then they needed more information. And with that information, then they could decide on their own. Jane did not need to know a reason in order to make a determination of whether or not a woman should have an abortion. So why would Jane ask? Why would Jane need to know? Good, Jane. Yeah.

I have like a little tiny bit of experience working in a very low level capacity in population and public health, specifically around sexual health research, and specifically around distributing services, resources, reducing barriers and stigma around STI testing in young men. That's right, yeah. And just across the board, increasing access to comfort of, decreasing stigma of, increasing awareness of conversation about, debunking myths about, et cetera. Pretty much anything.

Yeah. I'm using it in a public health capacity, but like the more we know about things, the more informed decisions we can make, the better able we are to empathize with others and imagine ourselves in similar situations, the better we know ourselves. Totally. Yeah. But it is part of it, especially as women who might not have a lot of sexual education, that might not even know why they're pregnant.

And then the legality of it. They're seeking an illegal procedure and they're terrified. So, so stemming that disinformation, but also that fear that's embedded into is, was so important. Heather, who started this group, but also had a very like a conscious decision in making it and centering woman. She was in a very strange position because she knew all of these doctors. She had their contacts.

Sometimes they would answer. Sometimes they wouldn't. But she was the one who had this information and the doctors were very secretive. They didn't want people to know who they were. Many if not the majority required patients to be blindfolded during the abortion procedure. Jesus. So that they wouldn't see the doctor. That's a little bit frightening.

It's a little, a little frightening. This took kind of a hostage vibe, Jane. This trip to your house for a cup of tea. Yeah. The blindfold. Okay. It was just when they would have the ability to see the doctor. That was the only time they were blindfolded.

When they were escorted there, there wasn't an issue. Could it be like a cute little sleeping mask instead of a blindfold? I don't know the answer to sleepy mask or blindfold, but I do know that for some women who felt uncomfortable having something on their faces, Jane would hold a pillow in front of her face, like not over her face, but a pillow that would block the woman's sight of the doctor's face. So there were accommodations made, I'll say that, but the fact that Heather knew some of the, Heather knew all of this information, but not everybody in the group knew it.

That fact created this weird group dynamic where the balance between the radical reformation of the medical hierarchies where the doctor knows everything and the patient is just being worked on. So the balance between reforming that and then centering women and giving them all the information they needed to know, don't lie to women, that balance was always off because of this legal issue. It was always a need to know basis of who was doing what at what time. One for the safety of the doctors, but two, if Jane was recruiting new members, they didn't

want to like off the top, be like, hi, welcome to Jane. Here's Dr. So-and-So's number. He performs legal abortions. Nice to meet you. See you next meeting. You know, they didn't want to send that information around. Because unequal access to information is inherently hierarchical, right? If you are more in the know than somebody else, you have more, but it's like we were

just fucking saying knowledge is power. Yeah, baby. So there's some tension in the group because of this, but things are moving along. They're doing about, they're ranging, I should say, two dozen abortions a week. They have a growing membership and they have started working more and more with this doctor named Dr. Kaufman. And he has an assistant named Nick who comes with him. And they recognize that Dr. Kaufman is like, he's a good doctor.

He's generally has a good rapport with patients. More or less enjoys working with him. Part of the follow-up process and the counseling for women, when they sent them to doctors that they didn't know very well, they would say, should we send more people to this doctor? And the women can say, it was kind of weird. They said this or he said that and I didn't like it. Then they'd stop using that doctor. Like an Uber review.

Like an Uber review. Exactly, yeah. So Dr. Kaufman, he's getting the good Uber reviews and there's an incident during one procedure where an irate husband starts banging on the door, calling all of them baby killers. The woman who is receiving the abortion is like, oh my God, that's my husband. He said he would stay away, but he won't, obviously. So they quickly finish the procedure. Dr. Kaufman and Nick, his assistant, grab all the instruments that they need and they

go through a second exit. They leave the building. It's quickly determined that there is no Dr. Kaufman. That there is only one person performing these abortions and it is Nick, who is not a doctor. He's gotten the good Uber reviews, but he is not a licensed medical practitioner. Oh my God. Yes. So there's two things that come out of this irate husband incident.

One they determined that they need to restructure the service. So they take women to a meeting location. They give them counseling at that meeting location and then they take them to a second location to have the procedure. They call the first place the front and the second place the place. Very inactive. The front and the place. I like that.

Listen, we take them to the front first and then we go to the place, like the actual place. You know the place. The place. I'm not going to say the abortion. What am I going to say? The back? It's not the back. That has a weird connotation.

This is a front. This is fake. This is facade. They're typically in different parts of the city too. You need to drive to get there. I wouldn't necessarily say it's sterile, but typically the front and the places are apartments. So they're pretty unassuming and pretty chill.

I'm feeling you're going to tell me what about young Dr. Nick. Yes, the non-doctor, non-doctor Nick. So there's a camp within Jane who suspected this for a long time. They have no way to vouch for these doctors. There's no- Nobody had ever met Dr. Kaufman kind of thing? Right. Yeah.

All of this is illegal, so they thought like, okay, what doctor is doing this? There's a potential that they're not a doctor. So one camp in Jane is thinking that and the other is like, holy fucking shit, this isn't a doctor. We've been telling women that we've been sending them to a doctor. We've been violating one of our, the prime directive, my friends, don't lie to women. And so what transpires from this pretty monumental shift in Jane is that there are some women who are horrified by what they have done by sending women to a non-doctor and they quit.

They're done. Then there are women who think, well, you know what? He's doing a pretty good job. We never had any complications. And he's not even a doctor. He's not even a doctor. Fuck, why don't we do this? Why don't we learn how to do this?

If this rando guy can do it, then we can, right? Okay. Nick is an interesting guy. Jane kind of suspects that he might have come to this through other legal facets of life and living. Listen, you can't, if you're doing illegal shit, you can't pick who, you know what I mean? Exactly.

You can't be a doctor, scare quotes. No, you get Nick the con artist. Nick the con artist who's pretty good at what he does, too. It's not like he's conning that element. Do you know what I mean? And at the end of the day, like, if his motives are pure or impure, but he's doing the job as required. Yeah.

I like. So Nick is kind of a strange relationship with Jane. Jane really takes him under their wing because he's reliable and he's pretty good at what he does. They start saying, you know, why don't we just give you a per diem? We can kind of knock down the price of some of these abortions. If we're able to just pay you a flat rate, then, you know, you'll make about the same amount of money.

It'll all be fine. It'll be good. And that's something I didn't mention before. Originally, the abortions start out at about $500. Which, 1969, 1970, that's a fuck ton of money to have for an emergency that you can't tell anybody about too, that potentially you can't tell anybody about. That right there is a barrier, right? Like you have to be financially stable in order to afford this.

And they're working more with him and cajoling him more or less and like really trying to convince him to lower his prices. If he takes a few at $600, could he do a few for free? He was into it as a business. Jane was very much into it as a public service and they wanted to decrease the cost of it and make it affordable for everybody. So there was a lot of backing for thing along that and then when they learned he wasn't a doctor, there was a lot of backing for thing about training.

There was one member of Jane who was adamant. She was like, just teach me. Let me sit in there. Let me watch. Just teach me. I want to know how to do it. I want to know how to do it. Eventually he teaches her how to do a DNC which stands for a dilation and keratage.

It's a surgical abortion where your cervix is given a little zap of where it takes away feeling. What's that called? Anesthesia. It's a little dose of an anesthesia and then instruments are inserted into the uterus and what's done is they'll take a tool to scrape, gently scrape along the sides of the uterus to release the material that has been growing there. So that can be fleshy blood, just like if you were to have a period it would be that

type of blood. But if you are pregnant, that uterine wall does contain a fertilized egg. So through that keratage, through that kind of gentle scraping, they're able to remove the fertilized egg from the uterine wall. So that's one of the most simplest surgical abortions available at this time. And Nick is a fucking pro. He knows the sound that a clean uterine wall makes. Jesus.

Yeah, it's all in there, dude. He knows how to talk to the women. He tells them what he's doing at every stage. And so eventually he teaches this to a few members that he trusts from Jane. And so they learn the DNC method which is for early stages of pregnancy. But Jane is devoted to abortions at any stage of pregnancy, so they also do take on late stage pregnancies. GNCs, that process of scraping, is no longer really a viable option for late stage pregnancies.

And what needs to happen is an induced miscarriage. So technically, surgically speaking, those are easier. In a hospital, it's a different case, but considering this is kind of like on-the-fly illegal abortion, what Jane would do, what Nick would do for Jane, and then what Jane learned to do was make a small tear in the amniotic sac, and then they would physically push a woman's abdomen so that all that amniotic fluid would leave her body. Then she was instructed to go to a hospital. She would have the miscarriage at a hospital if she couldn't afford that or couldn't feel

comfortable doing that. She could do that at home, but she needed to stay in touch with Jane for the whole time. Later as they got more people to work for Jane, they created a special clinic, which was essentially an apartment where women could go and be with essentially a midwife and carry out the miscarriage together. It's pretty—those abortions are pretty intense. It's a pretty intense way to do it, as you can imagine. It became clear to the women of Jane that those were really, really hard to do.

The women who were in charge of those miscarriages were almost like—they were like a whole separate camp. There seemed to be this divide between the women who were working the front or the women who were counseling or answering the phones, and then the women who had to do the miscarriages. It was interesting because this book that I read, The Story of Jane, lays it out in such a way that they were working so hard to take down and redistribute medical hierarchies, but with the miscarriages, they realized that there was a point to this medical professional distancing that happened because that served a purpose because it was just such an emotional

toll to walk women through these miscarriages. The burnout was really, really high for those women who had to do that work. As an organization, as a service, Jane felt that it wasn't right to turn women away who were in late-stage pregnancy. One, it could be that they couldn't find Jane in time, so that's why their pregnancy moved so far along. It could be that they just didn't know that they were pregnant until much later in the process, and then they had to find this illegal abortion.

There was just so many reasons why a woman might come to them with a late-stage pregnancy that they didn't want to draw a line there because they thought that it would, that was not the service they wanted to provide. They wanted to give women the choice, and this was the choice. Right. Yeah. And I think it's pretty intense, all of that, certainly. I'm sorry I'm not chipping in much.

My bag of funny abortion process jokes. I looked in and it was empty. Yeah. What do I got about the induced miscarriage? What's my bit? I don't got one, so I'm just letting you talk. Part of me is like, is this important to the story? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but what I think is important is talking about abortion and

knowing what it is, demystifying this idea that it might be this evil, bad thing. In actuality, it's a relatively simple medical procedure, made even simpler now with medical abortions where you can take a pill and induce miscarriage or whatever. So it's like, I think it is important to know what a DNC is, right? Right. So this is from the story of Jane by Laura Kaplan. Laura Kaplan was a member of Jane. So she writes, each woman and girl who contacted Jane came through the service bearing the

weight of her own personal circumstances. Whatever those were, the woman in the service tried to create an environment both in counseling sessions and during the abortions that was more than comforting and counseling. If a woman was forced into an abortion, nothing could ease the emotional pain. But if, as in the overwhelming majority of the people the service dealt with, the abortion was her choice. Even if that choice was circumscribed by medical, social, and economic factors, an abortion with Jane was a surprisingly positive experience as many women expressed at the time or in

follow-up calls or later in letters. Interesting. Again, because they centered this thorny, very emotional procedure and choice around her own agency, it could make the process transformative. There were so many times when, I mean, I don't know, I kind of try and put my shoes on and I try to put the shoes on of one of these women. You try to put your shoes on and use your rack as the same place. Try to tie my laces with other people's sneakers as they say.

Yeah, exactly. I feel like it was 1970, 1969, one of those years, and I really need an abortion and I'm terrified and I not only am able to get an abortion, but I walk in to this community that is so devoted to women and building women and supporting women and all they want to do is help me make this really hard choice. They were in no way shape or form telling people, you've called Jane, you need an abortion. They would say, are you sure you want to have this and help you walk through that decision with information, with coffee and Oreos or later as they got going, they had full-on

charcuterie boards at the front and holding your hand through the procedure letting you know it was happening through every step. I just imagine how life-changing that would be to go from feeling so scared and so sorry. Yeah, that would be an incredibly moving experience. Yeah, to just go from being so scared to so affirmed, so supported and just given the chance to start your life again or to continue the life that you wanted to lead, whatever you needed in that moment. It's just like, whoa.

For sure. At the top, I said that I would entertain people's conversations on the subject even if they didn't agree with my own and to some degree that's my privilege. I don't have a uterus, I don't have a partner with a uterus, I don't have skin in this game. But realistically, you hear these awful stories about illegal abortion and organizations that don't provide as affirmative an experience, let's say, as this one. Yeah. But I also think that I'm a Canadian looking in on America too, so there's that context

as well. I feel this is a big conversation and it's an important one. I feel limited in my relevance, but all I can offer is my empathy, if that makes sense. Yeah, and I think that's huge. I think that's one of the things that I took away from the story of Jane is that that in and of itself is a practice of healing, being able to listen to somebody and walk them through difficult decisions, that is essential to health, physical and mental. I had an experience once with assisted dying, somebody who had chosen to, you know, there's

terms like euthanasia, assisted suicide, whatever the term I'm using is assisted dying, but when something like that happens with somebody close to you, you suddenly have all of these decisions to make and it was immensely more useful to me being able to call somebody and be able to walk, be walked step by step. Here is what is going to happen. Here is how that's going to look. Here is how it might feel after that happens. I think that there's a predictability to demystifying mystical medical info that's really important.

Knowledge is power. We keep coming back to it again and again. The more you know and the more resources that you have access to, I should add, the better a decision you're capable of making. That's the other thing too. This was $500, right? Like there was a price tag on it, you were saying, in spite of various attempts to kind of make the service more equitable.

The equity piece is important too. This was expressed earlier by Jane, I think her name is. In 1970, the state of New York legalizes abortion. So we're relatively early in the history of Jane, we're about three years away from the federal legalization of abortion. But with New York state allowing it, that creates a situation in Chicago where they need to lower their prices. They can easily get Nick to knock his prices down because it would cost the same amount,

it would cost $500 to fly to New York and have a legal abortion. Now you're not the only game in town, Nick, and you can get it from a fucking doctor in New York. Yes, yes. I mean, there's still reasons like childcare or maybe they don't want other people to know. There'd be reasons to stay in Chicago and have it done still illegally, but the overwhelming tide has changed. And so they're able to lower the price of the abortion.

At the same time though, they're noticing that the demographics of the people who are calling and using Jane are changing dramatically. The turn of a dime, they are no longer seeing as many middle class white women. They are now seeing lower income and black women come in for the service, which creates another tension in Jane because Jane looks a lot like Heather Booth, the woman who began. They are typically white, they are typically pretty young, college educated for middle class backgrounds. They're Josie Mitchell College do-gooders.

Yes, no, exactly. And now the majority of the women who are coming are lower incomes from the south side of Chicago. And as you can imagine, there's concerns all around. They want women to always feel comfortable with Jane, but black women walking into white spaces is not very comfortable. In your head, your friend Jane looks like you. Or looks like, you know, it looks like someone you would hang out with or looks like your

mom or your aunt or whoever it is, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, there's also this element too, where it's a lot of white ladies giving black women abortions. There's this sense of maybe trying to remove black babies from the world. I mean, that's- It's the optics. The optics are concerning, I see.

Optics are not super great. I think more than anything, my concern would be the comfortability of the women coming to Jane. You want them to understand that this is their choice and no one is making it regardless of the color of skin and all of that. For sure. And there's all kinds of history of medicalized racism and people, you know, I don't blame anybody for being suspicious of something like that.

Totally, yeah. Especially when you're already in such a vulnerable position, you know, it's like, well, I don't really have a choice, so I gotta make this happen. And then you come in and all these smiling white ladies are there and it's like, is this Jane or is this like Jane by Jordan Peele kind of? Yeah, yeah, no, exactly, yeah, why is she smiling so much, yeah. Jane tried really hard to recruit more women of color into the service. Many of the women who came through had either had an abortion with Jane or they knew somebody

who had an abortion and had a positive experience in either scenario. And so they wanted to join, they wanted to help, they wanted to volunteer. And they were trying to do similarly with black women who would be coming through the service, but it was also a different demographic. If you're working three jobs, you don't have time to volunteer. That's on top of the fact that it's like, do you want to work with all these white ladies? Very well intentioned, but I don't know, if you felt uncomfortable with that vibe, why would you want to continue to work with them?

They did manage to recruit some women of color who were very vocal in terms of like, yes, these are all white ladies, but this is a good service and I'm behind it. They're white, but they're good, I promise. I know what you're thinking. Yeah. They're all white ladies, but it's good. Yeah, yeah, she was the most willing to kind of be spokes, spokeswoman. Her name is Marie Lerner.

She was involved with the black liberation movement. She was buds with Fred Hampton. She had worked with Black Panthers. She was sick and tired of the second class citizenship that was women's rights within the movement, within black liberation. So when she got word of Jane, she was like, I'm in. This is where I want to put my efforts. Abortion is important to me and this is where I want to be.

She made the point that she wanted to be there too so that black women would see another black woman in Jane. They could come to the front and see her there. They could see her at the place. She eventually did learn how to do D&Cs. They could see her doing D&Cs. It was important for her to hold that representation because she thought abortion was so important. And she recognized too that it was a different struggle for black women.

It was not only second class citizenship as being a woman, but it was also the trials of racism and Jim Crow, all of it. And so she wanted to help them. Do I call the police or no? Do I go to the doctor to access this medical service or no? Yeah. Yeah. All of them were potentially bad decisions, especially for black women.

And so she was very vocal in terms of saying at the root of all of this, you need to have choice over your reproductive destiny, especially as a black woman. And so she was pretty gnarly because she was willing to kind of put up with all the pearls and, you know, Hyde Park bullshit. It's amazing. May 3rd, 1972. Are you ready? Uh-oh.

Yeah. Here we go. Here we go. The homicide unit of the Chicago PD are notified by two women that their sister-in-law is going to have an abortion. They have the address and they are concerned and they want the police to do something. The homicide police officers, which you can imagine, are like ruddy-faced Chicago-bulking white dudes, typical cops.

They're like, oh, do we really have to do this? We're homicide. Like, does this fall on our jurisdiction? Their boss comes back, the chief says, yes, you have to go. It's illegal. Get over there. So they have the address for the place. It is in apartment complex in downtown Chicago.

They enter an elevator and standing in the elevator are two women. One of the cops looks at both of them and says, I've either of you had an abortion just now. Jesus Christ. I know. Right? Absolutely. I don't even know for best.

Who the fuck, first of all, who the fuck are you? What's your name? Yeah. Right? So the two women who were in the elevator, one was a Jane and the other was somebody who just received an abortion, who just received the service and she is terrified. She immediately breaks into tears. She says, yes, I have.

Oh, no. She gives them the apartment number. They run off. She apologizes to Jane, but Jane is like, it's okay. Just don't say anything more. Please, thank you. Thank you. Please just limit the spread of the damage.

The police arrive at the apartment. They are banging on the door, asking to be let in, asking to be let in. The Jane members in the apartment are kind of surprised because at this point, they've always suspected that the police have known about their dealings, have known about their whereabouts, but have never really pulled the trigger because Jane is providing a service that they know for a fact that wives, daughters, sisters of policemen, even women who work within the force, have used their services. So there's absolutely no way the police are completely ignorant to us, but they choose

not to arrive. So the police barge in, they see a living room that's filled with women and snacks, and the bedroom doors, there's two rooms that are being used for abortion procedures. Those have been locked, and so they start banging on those doors. Jane who's working inside, Nick is not there. It's only Jane working that day. They finish up their procedure. The women who are receiving the abortion are able to put their clothes on.

It's all very rushed and terrifying. And they all come out, and the cops look around, and they see that it is only women. And they say, where is he? Where's the doctor? Is there another exit? Where's the doctor? We don't see him. A room full of women, but who gave abortion?

What could have happened here? So the police interrogate everybody. The women who are not a part of Jane, who are there to receive abortion services, are terrified. They give their names, they explain why they're there. The women who do not give their names, the police can determine are the ones giving the abortion or supporting the abortion services. They take all of those women and they handcuff them to each other in the kitchen.

And there's a police officer who's given the job of kind of watching over them as they interrogate more people. And apparently he looks to one of the women who's handcuffed. And I had said earlier that Jane was starting to do more elaborate food for everybody as they were waiting for their abortions. And to feed the staff who were there, but also the women and like, you know, it was no longer like coffee and Oreos, they were serving full on meals. And that day they had put a pot roast in the oven.

So the room was filled with this delicious smelling pot roast that was cooking. So of course the police officer asks, like, oh, what's for lunch? And one of the members of Jane looks straight at him and says, pig. Oh, no. That's like, I love it. That's too much. Too good. It's just too good.

It's too good. That's hilarious. So there are seven members of Jane who are rested at that place, at the place. They are taken downtown to a holding cell and they stay overnight in jail, awaiting their bails to be set. The first woman to get out is she's a nursing mother. And so the night court judge is relatively sympathetic to her. She also or her husband is a lawyer and knows the judge.

And so there's kind of, you know, some relationship there. Her bail is set and she gets out that night. The other women, their bail is set the next day and they're able to get out. Jane is busted. The seven women who are rested are referred to in the media as the abortion seven, which is, yeah, a little rough, a little rough, not the abortion seven. They look around for a good lawyer. Again, one of the, one of the members of Jane, her husband's a lawyer.

They're able to shop around. The majority of lawyers that they meet are men and they're pretty condescending. Most all of the male lawyers they meet refer to them as girls. At this point, Jane ranges an age from probably 18 to 45. These are decidedly women and they land on the only female lawyer they could find. Her name is Joanne Wolfson and she's not particularly interested in taking on their case just because she hates hippies. Don't we all.

She takes on their case eventually though. She tells them flat out, I'm not interested in bringing this to the Supreme Court and using this as a test case to legalize abortion. I just want to get you all out of fucking jail. I hate hippies. I don't want to be part of this big political movement. I just want you out. You know what?

Sometimes, hero ship chooses us, not the other way around. She sounds like a fucking riot. She appeared in court with them wearing canary yellow pants and a sleeveless canary yellow sweater with canary yellow patent leather briefcase. Oh my god, yes. She had these big silver clanking bracelets on her wrists and great big earrings. Her hair and makeup were perfect, outrageous, but perfect. One of the members of Jane said she had a mind like a steel trap.

I loved it that she could walk in there looking like that and all the canary yellow and play their game and win. Don't be deceived by peacocks, folks. Especially lawyer peacocks. I think it's all a ruse anyway. Her tactic with the abortion seven was to delay legal proceedings as much as possible. She knew what was happening with Roe v. Wade because this was 1972 when the women were arrested.

She had an inkling of what might happen in the Supreme Court. So her tactic was push it, push it, oh, there's a slight discrepancy here. Can we push the court date? Push the court date, push the court date. Funnily enough, nobody in Jane was really on top. They weren't really following the news of Roe v. Wade. There were so many laws swirling around and so many, they were busy women. I think they were just really uninterested in the legal issue.

The legal issue had failed them left, right, and center, so they just were going to middle fingers up, let's roll, ladies. On January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court and women now had access to abortion. The prosecution against the abortion seven against the seven women arrested was completely dropped. Their records were expunged. They had nothing to worry about pretty much.

Everything had kind of dropped out of midair for them. Out of midair. Well, you know what I mean? Yeah, I get it. I get it, like a bullet, but then it just stops. Yeah, yeah. It's like that. That's good, actually.

I want that image, yeah. No, I'm there. I'm there. There's bullets speeding toward them, dropped out of midair. How about that? That was the ricochet noise. Between the time of the arrest and Roe v. Wade, Jane as a service besides the seven women who were arrested actually kept going.

They in fact expanded their services. They learned how to conduct pap smears. They teamed up with a gynecologist who offered to do post-abortion follow-ups with patients for a discounted rate. They decided that even if people were arrested in Jane, women still needed abortions. So they were going to service them, which is really remarkable to me because it's very terrifying to think of getting arrested like that again, knowing that it had happened once. But they kept going.

When Roe v. Wade was decided as a group with consensus, they decided to fold Jane. It was no longer going to happen. When they did this, they had a public-facing entity because they had been arrested. So they put together a statement to make to the public. It encapsulated their thoughts on what abortion needs to be. Yes, it is legal, but now it needs to have these qualities in order to be safe for all women. Sure.

This is part of their statement. To ensure abortions being not only medically safe, but comfortable and human, these things must be done. Outpatient abortion clinics freestanding as well as hospital-attached must be made available. The cost of an abortion must be cheap, $100 max, and covered by public assistance and all other health insurance. Patients must be available without restriction in the second and third trimester. Paramedics not only MDs must be able to provide the service, there should be supportive counseling

done by women as part of each procedure, and consent to the operations should only come from the pregnant woman, not hospital boards, not her parents, not her husband. These are pretty interesting qualifications to legal abortion that were not included in Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade came about, legally, came about through this identification of the right to privacy. So it was the right to a privacy between a woman and her doctor to determine whether or not an abortion needed to be performed.

As relieved and elated as Jane was that abortion was now legal, they were pretty bummed with the way that Roe v. Wade framed abortion. Well good news. Yeah. I'm reporting back from the future and it's not like that anymore. Roe v. Wade, if you read some of the legalese that's in there, it centers the physician, it centers the doctor quite a bit. It's the doctor's decision.

In the end, the doctor gets to decide whether or not an abortion can take place, which, as we know, is antithetical to the Jane movement, right? To the way that they approached abortion and the choice, because it's not about who is administering the abortion, it's about the person who has decided to get the abortion. It's patient-centered care, which is an accepted standard, in my opinion, in pretty much every medical discipline, no. I've been to a few gynecologists my day and say no. Okay.

Yeah. Noted. It can be rough. It's really interesting because Roe v. Wade came through and it dropped the bullet out of midair. It solved all these problems for these women who were arrested, and yet it didn't really solve the problem of abortion, which from our future standpoint, we can understand completely and fully.

But I'll end with a quote from Laura Kaplan, who is the author of this book that I pulled on quite a lot, The Story of Jane, and it's a really good book, too, I recommend it. But she also was a member of Jane, and so, I don't know, giving her a quote at the end here, I think, feels important. Here from Jane herself, the service embodied a shift in consciousness, from asking for something to doing it ourselves. And I think that that means Jane as a service, asking for abortions and then doing them themselves, but also for women seeking abortions, you know, being an active part of that choice.

We in Jane learned that social change is not a gift given by leaders and heroes, but is accomplished by ordinary people working together. We make it happen by what we choose to do. Yeah. Considering the position that the US is in now, where we need more rights when it comes to abortion, I take a lot of solace in that idea that if we want to bring that access back, we can, and we can bring it back better. I appreciate your bringing that story, and it's a really interesting story.

I didn't know much about it. As I said, I try to take as humble a position as I can in this conversation, but it's important to sit down and listen to these stories, right? Yeah. And remind ourselves what access to this particular medical decision looks like, what it should look like, what it could look like. Yeah. For me, at least, because I said at the top, but so much of my ideas around it were theoretical

and reading and researching this story and made me see all the ways in which it drops out of the theoretical and becomes, you know, a lived experience. Yeah. I'm so thankful, too. Yeah. That's about where I'd put it. It's hard. We're not going to be able to sum up everything in a neat little package at the end of this

one, because this is very much a story that's still being written. Yeah. Oh, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Thanks, Jane. Sweet.

Exo. Jane. Exo. Yeah. Janne. Janne. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find podcasts.

We usually release new episodes every other Sunday. You can also follow us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. If you liked the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review, or just telling a friend. Stay sweet. My sources for this infamous were, 50 years ago, Star Trek's history was sealed with the Uhura Kurt Kiss by Cyrus Faravar on Ars Technica November 22, 2018, Hollywood Flashback Star Trek showed TV's first interracial kiss in 1968, Hollywood Reporter Bill Higgins May 26, 2016, Nichelle Nichols completed her Star Trek mission so that I'd never know

a world without Lieutenant Uhura by Melanie McFarland for Salon August 3, 2022. I also watched an interview Nichelle Nichols granted with the Archive of American Television. I also watched Star Trek Season 3, Episode 10, Play-Doh Stepchildren, which is where the clip that you heard is from, it's hosted on the YouTube account Gregory1. We also used the Star Trek Original Series intro hosted on YouTube by Dina Dangong. The sources that I used for this episode were the book The Story of Jane by Laura Kaplan, published 1995 by Pantheon Publishing. I watched the documentary The Jains, directed by Tia Lesson and Emma Peldis, that came out

this year, 2022. I looked at the Wikipedia articles for The Jane Collective and Roe V. Wade. The song that you are listening to now is Tea Street by Brian Steele. If you're interested in learning more about abortion resources, I recommend going to riseupforabortionrights.org, shoutyourabortion.com, nextjinnamerica.org, or look at planseapills.org. Stay sweet!